The MMO industry moves along at the speed of information, and sometimes we’re deluged with so much news here at Massively Overpowered that some of it gets backlogged. That’s why there’s The MOP Up: a weekly compilation of smaller MMO stories and videos that you won’t want to miss. Seen any good MMO news? Hit us up through our tips line!

Do you have talent? Then Darkfall: Rise of Agon wants you to chip in and help out — for pay, of course. The team behind this indie PvP MMO announced the formation of its Agon’s Community Talent (ACT), an initiative to recruit talented artists that can help design resources for the dev-strapped game.

Players can submit their own decorations, weapons, and armor designs with the hopes of having them added to Rise of Agon’s cash shop. Those that do will be rewarded: “While getting new items and artwork you created added to the game you love sounds great and all, we want to also reward you for your hard work. Everyone who finds one of their entries added to the Nithron Coin Shop will officially join ACT, providing them not only with forum and in-game recognition but with financial reward as well.”

ACT will help with the game’s transition to a freemium model that should open the doors to more players giving it a try. In addition to this initiative, the team is hard at work on a market patch with a new auction house interface and a global wallet.

Specifically, it’ll take a little longer for players to work champ spawns – up to 60 minutes in some cases – but the mobs won’t be insta-killing you anymore, and there are different party-size requirements depending on where those fights take place. Moreover, loot has been improved, such that everyone gets his or her own roll for gold and gear.

“Sealed Treasures contain the rare items the champions will be dropping and can be opened at any time,” explains Big Picture Games. “Each mainland champion will drop its designated rank 75 weapon and 2 stat potions that will take a player 1 point at a time up to 120 max stats. Each island champion will drop Q6 enchantment gems, the only place to obtain Q6 enchantments, as well as 2 of the 120 stat potions. Each champion will also have a chance to drop existing rare items and potentially 1 of 4 brand new house items.”

The patch added special billboards to each capital city, allowing “blue” players to use them to teleport between villages that are active. There is a cost to using these billboards, although the cost is defrayed the more alignment that players rise.

Other changes with the patch include better visuals for crafting windows, cheaper costs for enchanting gems, map notations showing who owns which settlement, an increased pace of village activations, and additional stat boosters for new players to get them up to speed.

Right now it is not hard to keep the two Darkfall reboot projects separated. While Rise of Agon launched earlier this year, New Dawn is still working toward its own official release. At least with this week’s Patch 4.0, the PvP MMO will have made significant progress toward that goal.

There is a lot that the developers crammed into this patch, so let’s tick off the salient details. There is an improvement in the mob artificial intelligence (in part, to head off exploits), new tailor robes, the removal of bindstones for a local resurrection option, a beefed up alignment system, quest kill sharing, and better player progression and combat balance.

The team also improved the visuals a bit: “We have implemented post-processing effects that allow us to tweak color saturation and image contrast. The current settings will not fit all locations in game, but individual environments are being tweaked for the next patch.”

Get a quick overview of the update and a look at some of these snazzy new outfits after the jump!

This is being accomplished in part by rejiggering stats and skills. All races now start out with a baseline of 20 in all stats, and a single attribute potion will take a stat up to 100 right away (do not pass go). It has also become a lot easier to see what spells and skills you can unlock and what you need to do to get them. There are more ways to level skills through use, although the team said that scrolls remain the fastest way to boost your abilities.

The patch also added in a faster way to equip gear from inventory, something called “remote crafting,” and name change tokens for players who sneezed while typing their alter ego and added an unnecessary umlaut or that fun Danish Ø.

From the sound of things, it doesn’t appear that Darkfall: Rise of Agon is doing quite as well as its indie team was hoping. The PvP sandbox launched in May and posted a roadmap just a few weeks ago, but now Big Picture Games is acknowledging that a drastic course correction might be needed.

In a short and slightly unnerving post on Rise of Agon’s site this week, the team acknowledged that the game’s direction is “underwhelming” to many players and is reassessing the MMO from the top down and bottom up.

“We came to the conclusion that much of what we have been trying desperately to hold onto were the roots of what Darkfall had become,” the team wrote. “This was a game that involved a heavy time sink, required perseverance, and tolerating insane amounts of tedium. What we attempted to do was walk a line between casual and hardcore play times, and we now know this was a mistake.”

Big Picture said that it will be evaluating how it can remove grind and inaccessibility, starting with “a series of design discussions” this weekend.

In case it slipped your mind, Darkfall: Rise of Agon launched a whole two months ago now. With the fresh car smell of this reboot slowly fading away, attention for both devs and players have turned to the eternal question of “what’s next?”

The team said that with launch craziness behind it, focus can shift to the promised monthly updates for the fantasy sandbox. To wit, a Q3 2017 roadmap was posted with a brief outline of the content that’s planned over the next three months.

This month, Rise of Agon is going to beef up player vendor abilities, add over 100 new tasks, and throw in champion spawn chests, among other features. August’s update is going to take the form of deployable control towers and the ability for players to change their names (witness protection program?). Then looking ahead to September, expect to see armor and weapon dyes arrive.

Is Ashes of Creation destined to be the Kickstarter event of the year? Today on the ‘cast, Bree and Justin talk about this crowdfunding tsunami, several MMO patches, a superhero preview, and even a launch. Also, Bree is selling the entire contents of her virtual garage. It was a busy week!

It’s the Massively OP Podcast, an action-packed hour of news, tales, opinions, and gamer emails! And remember, if you’d like to send in your own letter to the show, use the “Tips” button in the top-right corner of the site to do so.

The MMO industry moves along at the speed of information, and sometimes we’re deluged with so much news here at Massively Overpowered that some of it gets backlogged. That’s why there’s The MOP Up: a weekly compilation of smaller MMO stories and videos that you won’t want to miss. Seen any good MMO news? Hit us up through our tips line!

Some leaks about the next Guild Wars 2 expansion have taken place, and they hint at new maps and new specializations. They might be legitimate or elaborate hoaxes, but we’ll know more in the near future (we hope).

The next Legends of Aria test has been delayed until May 12th, with a stream on May 8th showing off elements of the next test. So you’ll have to wait a bit longer to speculate about the Knight.

That’s it! Oh, except for all of the stuff on the list below. So that’s it for everything not on the list. Also, some of the stuff on the list. Look, just check out the list below and let us know if something slipped into a new test phase while we weren’t looking, all right?

In conjunction with the launch, the Rise of Agon team joined up with OriginPC for a rather large giveaway for this type of indie game:

“We’re giving 1 fan a grand prize of an ORIGIN PC CHRONOS gaming desktop valued at $2,400, featuring an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti, 30 Days of Game Time in Darkfall: Rise of Agon, and a $50 Domino’s Gift Card! 2nd and 3rd place winners will receive 30 Days of Gametime in Darkfall: Rise of Agon, and a $25 Domino’s Gift Card! Seven runner-up winners will receive 30 Days of Gametime in Darkfall: Rise of Agon!”

As you might recall, Darkfall: Rise of Agon is set to launch in early May, which means that its beta program is currently winding down. Before the beta ends entirely, the team is inviting anyone who wants a look at the game to try it out for free. All you have to do is to create an account and download the game through Steam, and free play is yours until the beta shuts down on Monday, April 24th.

Free access isn’t the only topic on the table, not by far. Rise of Agon’sonline store is now live, with subscriptions and currency on sale at 10% off. The standard subscription is set at $9.99 for 30 days of game time, with discounts for multiple months purchased. Players who previously purchased a Legend pack can now reserve their character name for the May launch.

Finally, the launch trailer and overview video are here, so give them a watch after the jump and see if it kindles your interest in the MMO reboot!